SQL Server 2008 R2 – new features/enhancements in SSRS

There have been quite a few enhancements in SSRS in R2. Some of the ones that we have played with so far are:

Report Builder 3.0: Right now, it is not bundled with the CTP. You need to download it separately from here.

Support for the Map and Spatial Data

AJAX Report Viewer

RDL enhancements like new lookup functions and support for geospatial data

ATOM Data Feeds: SSRS data can be exposed using ATOM Data Feeds. So, that data can be easily consumed by any client that can consume ATOM data feeds.

New Data Visualization Report Items like the sparklines, Indicators etc.

In this post, we are going to cover the new feature of supporting map and spatial data. So, let’s bring up Report Builder 3.0 first and you will see that it feels and looks like exactly it’s predecessor version. But on the insert tab, you will now also see a Map option which has the option of either using a Map Wizard or to simply insert a map into the report.

Now, if we go with the wizard option, there are a lot of choices that are presented – you can pick the source of the spatial data to be from a SQL Server database (via a query) or you can pick spatial data from a set of installed maps or you can also use a link to a ESRI shapefile.

For this post, let’s pick up from one of the states – Florida and on the next page you will see that you have a choice of adding a bing maps layer as well:

Zoom In/Zoom Out, resolutions are things that you can play with over here. You can then choose from the different types of data visualization schemes. We just choose the basic scheme and after clicking finish, the map is embedded within the report layout. We could also choose to create bubble type visualizations – the example in BOL and also the wizard shows to include sales data by region and that can be easily embedded here. If we now simply run this report, we can see the embedded map:

This is of course a very simple example to demonstrate the new feature. The real value comes from extracting the data from the database and then displaying it in the report. We will cover that in our next blog post using the latest version of the AdventureWorks database from codeplex.